I am often asked how the snow scene was built, so here are some step-by-step pictures which illustrate how the project unfolded:-

Between Christmas 2022 and New Year (during the cold snap) I made a table with some fairly crude scaffolding on it covered in chicken wire. The legs are foldable, so in theory it is portable. Once it was in this state, I got it all indoors and out of the cold. We were closed until February for maintenance, so I had about 6 weeks to do most of the landscaping:- 

Next – covered it in newspaper (back to Junior School for some papier mache) with a base made of condensed polystyrene. Note that I already placed the train tunnels using kitchen roll and model entrances:-

Then sprayed on 10 cans of expandable foam – very messy job! 

Then onto scuplting out the main shape using a kitchen knife. Note, the lovely big hole in the styrofoam above the bottom ski lift station made a nice bonus “cave” network. Here is a rough plan of how I saw it panning out. This is not based on anywhere real, just loosely on somewhere “in my head”:- 

Then lots of extra-lightweight filler to form the final landscape and a bit more carving to create the rock faces. Painting the rock faces was trial and error and in the end I went for a light grey base (shown on the left) covered with a mixture of dark grey, yellow and red washes (shown on the right):-

Then as I was painting the ski-slope, the magic moment occurred where I simply flicked the brush down and right across the rock faces to put “snow” onto them. This brought it all together and was the point at which I knew it was all going to come out looking quite nice:- 

Then onto building lots-and-lots of models. Came up with a nice way of getting stained glass into the church windows by printing stained glass onto transparent inkjet labels then sticking them onto frosted glass before glueing them inside the windows. Also, found a nice solution for getting interior lighting into the train. Making the buildings was a big test of my patience as it was all similar to my childhood where I used to make Airfix Spitfires etc, but had to be done to a much higher quality. The kits are all from Germany and are “N” gauge (1:150). The ski-lift is actually HO scale (1:87), so I surrounded it with larger trees to hide the scale difference:-

An early view from the top where you can see my first “failed” attempt at making a lake with resin. Note the trees were painted in the same way that the rock faces were. This also helped to fan out the branches and make them look more natural – 300 of them in the end:-

Pleased with the final version of the lake using a mixture of Clearfix glue & isopropinol onto a painted base and stippled with a lollipop stick to make some ripples. Sprinkled some fake snow near the banks and it formed some nice looking underwater ice effect as it sank and clustered:-

Some pictures nearer completion:-

and then a last picture “in the dark” after I’d finished the electrics. Cheated with house/christmas tree lights by using 10m of fairy lights stuffed up through holes in the base rather than individual LEDs. Hence why it’s a little bit lit up underneath. Note how cute the cars are with their head/tail lights:-

All the best,

Rob